A Grammar of Athpare

12

Athpare has, like all languages of the South Asian sprachbund, verb-final word
order, with modifiers preceding the head. It is morphologically ergative with a split
between the 1st person pronouns, which do not combine with the ergative case marker,
and the rest. There are few ergative traits in syntax. Unlike most verb-final languages,
but in accordance with the neighboring languages, Athpare makes little use of converbs
and participles. Subordinate verbs are marked for person, number and tense-aspect, but
they are minimally reduced in a way that is unique among Kiranti languages: they lack
the final tense marker.

The most striking feature of Athpare grammar is the extremely complex verbal
system. In principle, both actor and undergoer are marked on the verb in a rather
idiosyncratic way. Sometimes thete is a simple person marker {a- for 2nd person,
independent of number and role), sometimes a simple number marker {-ci dual).
Sometimes person and number are combined (-/ l/2p) and sometimes person, number
and role (m- 3pA/S). The system is further complicated by several types of suffix
copying, resulting in the longest suffix chains found in any Kiranti language so far,
e.g. ni-ni'm-get-n'et-ni'm<i'm'ma-ga (see-NEG- l/2pA-V2:attain-NEG-AUX:PT-NEG-
l/2pA-3nsU-l/2pA-e-NML:ns) 'we (pe) had not seen them*.

^ The LSN material is not always reliable. Especially the verbal paradigm questionnaires contain many
errors, as it is impossible to ask an informant 120 verbal forms form a paradigm in a row. I found four
of the questionnaires (with a word list and translations of 1 10 sentences) very useful once I could
interpret the variants.

A Grammar of Athpare

Karen Ebert

1997

LINCOM EUROPA , ,^^^^^ ^^ ^

LiNCOM Studies

Munchen - Newcastle in Asian Unguistics 01